


A Secret

by stormae



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fraternity, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, reference and usuage of drugs and alcohol, they're wild teens what do you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 13:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormae/pseuds/stormae
Summary: so you’ve chosen a secret for your seven minutes in heaven?





	A Secret

The bass was loud and low enough to be heard from the street, thrumming up through the soles of your shoes to reverberate in the cavity of your chest. It was the type of music designed to make it impossible to stand still.

The Nu Kappa Tau fraternity you stood before was huge and renowned, for what depended on who you asked. The house was colossal and ornate, even from the outside. A relatively neat lawn leading up to a pylon-ringed porch where the huge, dark-wood double doors sat wide open, beckoning you into the belly of the beast.

Your friend, Jooeun, shared a tutorial with one of the NKT boys, and had spent two hours of the afternoon convincing you it would be fun to attend one of their infamous frat parties. You’d heard stories about how people spilled from windows and created mountains of writhing limbs on the dance floor and drank beer and mixers as if they were drinking from an unending fountain.

The reality sitting before you was not so extreme, but it certainly ran along the same vein. The party was full, with the same thumping bass now rattling your brain inside your head as you stepped over the threshold of the front door and condemned yourself to whatever the night had in store for you. The house was dark and the air was laden with suspicious smoke, with flashes of colour here and there to permeate the murkiness. The foyer was clothed in marble, a chandelier that you were sure had tempted more than one partygoer to try and swing from dangling from the ceiling. A curving staircase flanked either side of the foyer, white marble leading to the second floor. The house split off in wings to the east and west, but the poor souls that entered the house were more often than not funnelled straight ahead, towards the most grand living space.

The living room with the adjoined kitchen was a heaving mass of people moving their bodies to the slow hip-hop beats escaping the speakers and rattling the light fixtures and framed paintings on the walls. If you looked beyond you could see girls and guys, some fully clothed, some in underwear, some in nothing at all, frolicking drunkenly in the pool in the backyard, spilling drinks and who knows what else into the water.

As Jooeun shepherded you towards the kitchen counter where various drinks were there for the taking, you looked around and noticed there was a uniformity to everyone in the room.

The boys of NKT were wealthy, that was a given, and you could tell they had more money from their parents than they knew what to do with by the lavishness of the house and the expensive clothes they and their friends donned. Sweatshirts and bomber jackets, beanies and button downs, snapback caps sat backwards on top of their heads and jewellery dangling from their necks and coating this fingers.

“Here,” Jooeun shoved a vodka raspberry into your hand. You gave her a skeptical look.

“I promise you can’t taste the vodka,” she laughed at your apparent doubt, “I’m an excellent drink maker.”

You screwed up your face, “Last time you made me an espresso martini it was essentially a glass of vodka with ice cubes and weak, shitty coffee flavouring.”

She frowned, but knew she didn’t have any proper arguments to combat your statement. “Shut up and drink your vodka.”

You smiled as you brought the red solo cup to your lips, certainly tasting the hard alcohol amidst the carbonated lemony drink, but you didn’t really mind. Looking around at the swathes of drunken college students, you felt the need to catch up and be at least a little tipsy, as soon as possible. The vodka slipped down your throat and began to warm you from the inside, out.

You and Jooeun stayed in the kitchen for the next little while, finishing your first drinks, then your second, and were halfway through your third when a familiar face weaved their way from the crowd and flung a friendly arm around Jooeun.

“Jooeunie!” Jung Jaehyun beamed down at your friend, artificially blond hair slightly damp against his forehead from the heat inside the house and the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing. You knew of him vaguely, purely due to the fact Jooeun studied with him on the rare occasion, but he was a prominent member of the frat. Enough money to fill an Olympic swimming pool, not afraid to blow every dime. He was also equipped with deceptive dimples and a heart-breaking smile. He was a boy you made a mental note to stay away from, no matter how tempted.

“Jaehyun,” Jooeun smiled, her eyes already glassy from the alcohol coursing through her bloodstream, “this is my best friend, Y/N.”

“Y/N!” Jaehyun chirped in the same tone he’d said your friend’s name, releasing Jooeun to embrace you in a hug. You returned it with a laugh, patting him on the back before detaching yourself from the sticky torso.

The attention span of a heavily intoxicated person is never impressive, as indicated by the way Jaehyun swiftly forgot about you and turned back to your friend.

“Jooeun, we’re playing Seven Minutes in Heaven and we need another person to make numbers even,” he winked poorly and nudged her gently with his elbow, “you in?”

Jooeun grimaced slightly, brushing her hair from her face as her boozed-up brain attempted to work at an appropriately quick pace, “I can’t, Jae. You know I’m going out with Hansol.”

“Hansol’s not here!” Jaehyun tried, “Isn’t he on exchange?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t change the fact I’m not going to play,” Jooeun laughed, shoving him back gently.

Jaehyun bobbed his head in defeat, “Then can you find a sub?”

Jooeun’s eyes immediately landed on you. Your eyes widened and you felt your head move from side to side quickly.

“Y/N can play, she’s not seeing anyone right now.”

Jaehyun turned back around to face you, his face alighting in an ecstatic grin, as if your presence had solved all of his life problems. “Y/N!”

Before you could properly protest, Jooeun was moving your cup to your lips and tipping it assertively down your throat. As the increasingly strong dose of vodka seared its way down your oesophagus she made you another, the spirit bottle looking suspiciously like Bacardi 151, for which there was certainly not enough Coke in the red cup, before shoving you off towards Jaehyun. He flashed you a smile and guided you through the crowd of people to one of the quieter sitting rooms off to the left of the house.

Inside the room the music was duller but still present, making sure you couldn’t forget where you were. Sprawled around the room were a number of people, some you recognised, some you didn’t. A girl from your business tut, a guy you studied with in first year, faces you’d seen on campus or seen at parties, some you could match names to and some that left you stumped. All were evidently drunk as they gathered in a circle, pulling up chairs and ottomans or just collapsing on the floor when the whole ordeal became too much and they gave up.

Jaehyun left you, going around the other side of the circle to talk to a couple of the other boys, so you found the nearest open space on the floor and plopped yourself down, careful not to spill the lethal drink in your hand. You took a sip and winced at the unexpected assault of rum on your tastebuds, but you were drunk enough for it not to be too bad. You took another sip, letting it slip past your tongue and slide straight to your stomach, and waited for the game to commence.

The first thing you noticed was the lack of table and/or bottle in the middle of the circle. The last time you checked, at least a bottle was a basic requirement in a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. You turned to the girl on your left to ask, when two boys stumbled into the room and closed the door behind them, the rest of the players in the room hushing almost immediately. You took another swig of your drink.

The first truly familiar face had entered, an orange-haired boy named Doyoung from one of your tutorials. He was accompanying an underclassman, with wide brown eyes and blond hair that stuck up in every direction.

“You boys done?” Jaehyun called from where he had collapsed on the floor.

“Yeah, yeah,” Doyoung dismissed, clapping the younger boy on the back and handing him a black bag, “Mark’ll hand them out.”

Doyoung joined the circle and Mark stumbled to the centre, tripping over crossed legs and giggling at his own clumsiness. “Ok,” he said, “ok. Ok, here we go.” When he’d seemingly reassured himself, he went around the circle, holding out the bag to each player. You picked a slip, wondering how they were going to have your name on one when you’d only agreed to play five minutes ago. You gazed around the circle of strangers and tried to pick anyone you’d be able to name, and found the options disappointingly limited. Seven Minutes in Heaven is awkward enough, let alone with someone you have to introduce yourself to in the thirty seconds it takes to walk to the closet.

You looked down at the folded piece of paper and smoothed it out, expecting to see a name printed against the white. Instead, what you read befuddled you.

“I don’t have a name?” One of the NKT boys, Johnny, spoke the question that had immediately risen to everyone’s lips.

“That’s because,” Mark slurred ever so slightly, blinking in Johnny’s direction, “we’re mixing’ things up a lil’.” He lobbed the empty bag out of the circle and placed his hands on his hips, accidentally crumpling his own paper.

“Instead of names, we’re doing this with riddles,” he informed you all, “so you either have the riddle, or the answer. Your partner for the closet is the person with your matching paper.”

You looked at your own and tried to think of a riddle that would lead to the answer you held, but came up stumped. Maybe it was the poor decision to mix rum and vodka that was impeding your deduction skills.

As people understood the rules, you took another glance around the circle. You recognised a boy you hadn’t even noticed was there before, sitting a few people to your right between Jaehyun and Yuta.

Dong Sicheng, with his intimidating, regal features, lack of spoken words and ever-watchful gaze, was a Chinese exchange student taking Hansol’s place in the NKT house for the year. On his first day a few weeks prior, you had been assigned to show him around campus due to your shared majors.

As you’d taken him around the sprawling campus, showing him the important lecture theatres on his schedule and the best places to study and grab coffee between classes, you’d done your best to converse with the elegant, attractive boy. But every attempt was in vain.

Apart from the initial introductions and quiet ‘ok’s and ‘yes,’ he had remained stoically silent throughout the tour. Equipped with dark, arched brows that seemed to draw to a slight natural furrow and clear, dark eyes, his face was every bit as intimidating as it was appealing, and his full, rosy lips didn’t tilt into a smile once the whole time. Each time you tried to start conversation, he receded into his shell more, almost as if he was determined to avoid letting you into his life.

You’d thought maybe it was the language barrier that was making him so reluctant to engage with you, and you’d brushed the awkward tour off. You figured it was basically his first day on campus, that he’d warm up to the place and the people the longer he was there, then you could maybe get to know him better.

You had been wrong.

You shared a sociology lecture with him once a week, and the first day you had walked in to see him sat between two NKT boys, laughing a glorious, dorky laugh and smiling broadly, apparently care free. It stung for a nanosecond, before you went to join your friends on the other side of the theatre. You’d come to terms with the fact that some people just won’t like you in life, and that was fine.

He was practically joined at the hip with Jaehyun and Yuta, who were both outgoing and confident in everything they did, which seemed an odd pair of people for such a reserved person to stick to, but you guessed being frat brothers had something to do with it—a connection you’d never know of. Either of the extroverted boys were much more your type. You’d always found you could establish friendships with more socially uninhabited people better, mostly because of your own introversion.

You never made a move to sit next to Sicheng in the lectures and he never spoke in class, and you noticed from brief moments when he caught your eye that he seemed reserved and cold with most people, so you paid him little mind. He was veritably stunning, but you let him fade into the background of your life, another faceless college student amongst all the extras in your life.

Now you were sitting in a circle across from him, and sure enough he hadn’t uttered a sound since you entered the room, the boys flanking him carrying the conversation on their own.

You returned your attention to the two words written on the paper before you, still trying to unravel the question that it answered. You repeatedly came up blank, so you decided to just wait.

“Ok,” Mark said for the nth time that night, “the people with a riddle will read, and when you have the answer to one of the riddles, yell or… put up your hand or… something…” Mark sat down heavily on the ottoman behind him, watching the group keenly.

“What is easy to get in to, but hard to get out of?”

“What am I?”

“What starts with F and ends with Uck?”

“What never goes up and can only come down?”

As the riddles were read, you failed to slot your answer into place. Different pairs took their turns to disappear into the storage closet, but there were still a few of you left to make the game ambiguous. You used the time to finish your painfully strong rum and coke. Liquid courage at its finest.

Sicheng was next to read, with Jaehyun and Yuta whispering pronunciation and translation in his ears. He cleared his throat, and strung more words together than you’d ever heard him say, “If I have it, I don’t share it. If I share it, I don’t have it.”

There was a beat for a moment as nobody volunteered an answer. You were more than slightly distracted by the sound of his voice, deep and smooth and accented, but after a moment you processed what had been said.

The other members of the circle began to call out answers when nothing was offered.

“Chocolate!”

“Your maths notes.”

“Your stupid fucking inside jokes with Yuta.”

Needless to say, none were correct.

You felt Sicheng’s gaze on you as you watched the other participants, and it elicited goosebumps on your skin. You were far quieter than the others, and he had noticed.

You looked down at your slip of paper, let a small sigh escape your lips, before reading the two words printed clearly, “A secret. It’s a secret.”

There was a chorus of ‘ohhh’s of realisation, followed by teasing ‘oooh’s as Jaehyun jabbed an elbow in Sicheng’s ribs and Taeyong reached around to ruffle the Chinese boy’s dark hair.

The pair of you stood, exchanging barely a glance as Jaehyun herded you towards the closet. Sicheng twisted the handle and gestured for you to go into the dimly lit space first, before following in behind.

“Seven minutes,” Jaehyun needlessly informed you, showing the timer on his phone before clicking ‘start’ and shutting the door.

You turned in the cramped space to face Sicheng, unsure of what would come next. He was a frat boy, so surely he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to kiss someone or try to cop a feel? Or maybe he’d actually say more than one word to you at a time in a groundbreaking turn of events.

For a moment you found yourself distracted once more by everything that was Dong Sicheng. His dark, silky hair was parted to the side and pushed away from his forehead, giving you a clear view of his face as the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling cast irregular planes of light on his face. You were close enough in the confined space to take note of the way his eyelashes framed his eyes, or how they were not just an intensely dark brown, but seemed to hold a sort of celestial quality in their gleam. You could also see the way his right ear came to a small point, almost as if there was something elfin or other-worldly about him.

But then you realised that you had both been just staring at each other, letting awkward silence fill the closet instead of the intended sounds of lust.

You quirked an eyebrow expectantly in his direction, but found that he just continued to stare, making no sign of moving. You decided that if anything were to happen during the longest seven minutes of your life, you were going to have to initiate it.

You thought for a brief moment that perhaps he didn’t really remember you, and didn’t want to ask for your name again. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, you began to reintroduce yourself.

“You might not remember me, but I’m Y/N—”

“I remember,” he cut you off firmly. You waited for him to expand on the brief words, but after an extended pause you realised he had no plans to keep talking.

“Ok…” You muttered, feeling the tension mounting. The attempt to break the ice had made things a hundred times worse. You contemplated just letting the time pass in silence and then never come into contact with Sicheng ever again, but after another fifteen seconds of weighted quiet you felt yourself going insane. There were at least six minutes left inside that closet. You were not going suffocate from the awkward atmosphere, you refused.

Using your frustration to gather your courage, you stepped forwards until you were well inside Sicheng’s personal space. He was more than a head taller than you, and the proximity had him looking down as you looked up. Despite the low light, you easily noticed the immediate flame rise to his cheeks, dusting his cheekbones a faint red colour. His bashfulness peaked as he tried to move backwards, only to find a broom preventing him from doing so.

Kiss him, your brain told you immediately as your eyes came level with his lips. It was a ludicrous proposition suggested purely on impulse, just to see what his reaction would be. You restrained yourself, knowing that would not help the situation in the slightest.

You floundered for a moment for words to form a sentence, but you soon found your lips moving on their own.

“How’re you liking sociology?” You inquired, “Is that what you major in back home, as well?”

“Uh,” he gaped at you for a moment, but his brain ticked into gear, “yes, it is. I find it interesting, how society interacts with the individual.”

“I like it, too,” you smiled at him, trying to ease his apparent nerves, “Some people find it really boring, but I agree with you.”

“Mm,” he agreed, and the conversation seemed to start to stall. Before he shutdown completely once again, you asserted your voice once more.

“Is it really different here, in comparison to your university in China?”

He was quiet for a moment, thinking through his answer and translating it in his head, “It is different, but what I find most strange is being without my family.”

“You miss your family the most?”

“Yeah,” he nodded vigorously, the lights in his eyes coming to life in a way you had never seen brown eyes do before, “my mum used to cook for every meal, but it was dad’s food that was best. We weren’t allowed to tell mum that, though.” His face alighted as he chuckled at the memory, and you felt your heart swell in your chest at the sight.

From there, the conversation picked up its own momentum. You asked what his hometown was like, his favourite place to visit on long weekends, his friends from high school, and he began to really open up. His eyes darted all over the place and his hands moved erratically as he became more and more absorbed in his memories, so enthusiastic about conveying his feelings to you.

You watched and listened for the most part, barely needing to interject at all. You were able to take in the way he grew within himself as he became more comfortable, the way he radiated some unable quality. You could liken him to an excitable puppy or a baby bird in the way his expression sparkled and you yearned to smooth your hands over his hair in an oddly familiar motion.

“You know, I haven’t been to China yet, but I’d love to visit sometime,” you informed him offhandedly. If possible, it seemed Sicheng swelled with even more excitement.

“Yes! Oh my god, there are so many places to go, I could—”

Before Sicheng could finish that thought, the door to the closet swung open to reveal a still very drunk Jaehyun. His eyes flickered over the pair of you, with your nose basically brushing against Sicheng’s chest, and he immediately got excited, getting ready to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah.’ But then his eyes managed to notice the fact your clothes were still on straight and your hair was still tidy and neither of you appeared flushed in the slightest, and his excitement dwindled as quickly as it had arisen.

You and Sicheng said nothing, simply brushing past Jaehyun and moving back towards where the other intoxicated students were assembled. You retrieved your red plastic up, tilting it up against your lips and ingesting the last few dregs of the spirit, finding it didn’t burn in the slightest anymore.

There were still a few pairs left to take their turns in the closet, but you decided it was time for you to go and find Jooeun before you became too drunk to find your own feet. You waved half-heartedly at the few people you were acquainted with and proceeded towards the door, slipping out of the game room to be immediately enveloped in the thrumming bass and haze of illicit substances that pervaded the house.

You wove yourself into the crowd on the dance floor, moving your body to the beat as your eyes searched for Jooeun’s familiar figure. A hand clasped onto your wrist, startling you, but you turned to find it was the girl, herself.

“I was looking for you!” You shouted over the music. She kept her hold on your wrist and dragged you back towards the kitchen, where your night had started.

Away from the overbearing music and crush of bodies, you leant your hips against the counter, smoothing down your hair and enjoying the cool air that surrounded your sticky skin. Parties were many things, and hygienic was not one of them.

“How was it?” Jooeun asked, grabbing herself a pink cruiser from where they were perched on the counter, twisting the cap off with ease and bringing the sugary drink to her lips.

“It was fine,” you told her. The look she gave you indicated her disbelief.

“Just fine?”

You shrugged, “Yeah, it was fun.”

“Who were you paired with.”

“Sicheng.”

She scrunched up her features, “Who?”

“Dong Sicheng?” You tried to jog her memory, “Chinese exchange student, looks like a prince, talks to barely anyone?”

Jooeun shook her head, still at a loss as to who you’d spent seven minutes in heaven with.

“He didn’t make a move on you?” She asked, already halfway through her drink.

“No, I basically had to drag him into conversation, kicking and screaming.”

Jooeun grimaced, before shrugging her shoulders and finishing her drink. “Anyway,” she said, slamming the glass bottle on the counter for effect, “there are plenty of other boys at this party that I’m sure are more than willing to have a conversation with someone as gorgeous as you,” she swung an arm around your shoulder, prepared to steer you back towards the congregation of people, when two familiar figures stumbled through the doorway.

Yuta looked around him, noticed the kitchen appliances and unopened alcohol, before flinging his arms in the air and cheering, “We made it!”

Sicheng chuckled at his friend, patting him on the shoulder and shoving him in the direction of the beers, before his eyes landed on you and Jooeun.

“Y/N,” he acknowledged you with a smile that had your heart fumbling in its rhythm.

“Long time, no see,” you joked, not sure how to handle his voluntary attention.

There was a beat where nothing happened, before Jooeun thrust her hand out towards him and smiled, “I’m Jooeun, Y/N’s friend.”

Sicheng wilted slightly at the social engagement, but extended his own hand in a shake, “I’m Sicheng.”

“Oh!” Jooeun said, paired with an expression that was not sly in the slightest, before turning to you and placing a different intonation on the same word, “Oh?”

In that moment, Yuta appeared behind both you and Jooeun, seemed to take note of the situation, and wrapped an arm around your friend’s shoulders.

“Jooeun, let’s head back out to the dance floor, yeah?” He said, slurring his syllables but not failing to send a weighted look in Sicheng’s direction. Before Jooeun could answer, she was swept out of the kitchen with a new cruiser in hand. Apart from the comatose high person in the corner, it was just you and Sicheng once more.

He gave you that smile again, the one that halted all thoughts running through your head, and moved towards the bottles of hard alcohol and soft drinks on the counter. “Do you want a drink?”

Had Jooeun offered, you would have told her no, but you found ‘yes’ spilling from your lips almost immediately.

As he mixed you a dark rum and bitters with surprisingly deft movements, you leant yourself against the counter again, paying no mind to the bruising edge digging into your hips and focusing on the elegance with which Sicheng’s long fingers moved. You rekindled the conversation about China, feeling a peculiar but intense feeling of satisfaction when he lit up at the topic of his home country.

He finished the drink by scraping some of the last ice cubes out of the bucket in the corner before sliding the cup towards you, keeping one for himself. He rested his elbows on the titles next to you, inclining his head towards you to better hear your voice as you spoke about how you wanted to not only see the big cities, but see the natural parts of China that were so unique and interesting.

“If you ever do go,” he said, eyes sparkling with bona fide excitement, “definitely message me on Facebook or something, and I’ll show you around.”

Your chest warmed and a ball of anxious elation settled in your stomach, “Sure, I’ll let you know.”

And it struck you that the pair of you had finished your drinks, and the party had reached the stage where it thinned out dramatically with people either passed out or sitting around the edges talking or retired to their own beds for the nights, and you had managed to spend the better part of two hours talking to the boy you thought was incapable of more than three words at a time.

You had been wrong, he was outgoing and vibrant, he was just shy and a soft-spoken. But his laugh was loud and his smile was broad, and that was plenty enough for you.

You halved one of the last premixed drinks in your cups, feeling well beyond just a little drunk, and you could hear your voice relaying the same information it always did when you got too drunk to stop it.

“You know,” it said, and you had no choice but to listen, “I’m excellent at pool.”

Sicheng gave you a challenging look of vague disbelief, “Oh, really?”

“Yep,” you confirmed, bobbing your head and somehow managing to slosh your drink in the process.

Sicheng laughed, “Don’t you need steady hands to be ‘excellent at pool’?”

“Probably,” you shrugged, “wanna find out?”

Sicheng maintained his half smile, “Sure.”

“I’m assuming this stupidly big house has a pool table somewhere.”

“It does,” Sicheng confirmed, “follow me.”

And with that he took your hand in his and tugged you back out into the party, but instead of traversing the room as you had done to get to Seven Minutes in Heaven, you turned left and headed in a direction you had not previously been in. As you progressed further and further away from the party you became more and more aware of your hand in his, heat starting where your skin touched and travelling throughout your body.

You make it to yet another living room, this one vacant and much more tidy. The pool table in the centre had cues leant against the sides and the balls scattered messily, several still yet to be sunk. You fished the others out of the pockets and set them up between the plastic sides of the triangle, before picking up one of the pool cues that was far too long for your stature and attempting to break.

You managed to get the first hit, but every try after was a failure or may as well have been. As you lined up the glorified wooden stick and tried to aim, you found that either you or the ball was wobbling incessantly, making hitting the target increasingly difficult. After your cue cleared the desired ball three times, Sicheng took even more pity on you than he had already been in letting you retry, over and over again.

“I thought you said you were excellent?” He teased, coming to stand behind you.

“I am when I’m not this fucking drunk,” you ground out, the frustration of continually missing wearing down on your inebriated patience.

All vexation vacated your body almost immediately, however, when you felt him press his torso against your back and lean around you, placing his arms and hands over yours to steady the cue. You could almost feel his cheek touching your own, and you found yourself forgetting to breath.

“Three, two, one,” he whispered, eyes focused on the ball as he pushed the cue towards the green target, his lithe arms unleashing surprising force that saw the ball roll smoothly across the felt table and fall into the closest pocket.

But after the ball disappeared from sight, Sicheng let go of the cue and your body in turn, stepping out of your personal space and picking up his own weapon to sink another ball down the other end of the table.

“We play a fair bit, here,” he told you off-handedly, lining up his ball of choice and sinking it with more ease than a person as drunk as him was entitled to.

The entire routine repeated several times—he would get close enough for you to smell the cinnamon whisky on his breath and the cologne on his shirt as he helped you sink a ball, before immediately stepping out of your space to play his own side of the game, as well. You kept thinking that surely he was going to make some sort of move, with the pair of you all alone and barely able to hear the party anymore, but you were wrong over and over again.

You had long finished your last drink, and the liquid courage coursing through your system was telling you in no uncertain terms that if you wanted something done, you had better do it yourself.

He rounded the table for what was to be the last time, just the black 8 ball left to be sunk. He gave you a smile as he came to stand beside you, your shoulder pressed against his firm chest. “Do you want help with the last one, or can you manage yourself?”

The feeling of his words against the shell of your ear were enough to make you snap, one hand creeping up to hold his neck as the other grabbed a fistful of his shirt and tugged him down to where your lips could reach him. You connected your mouth with his, lips moving once, twice, three times before you realised that he wasn’t returning the favour.

Your eyes snapped open and you sprang away from him, the phrase ‘I’ve fucked up I’ve fuck up’ running repetitively like a broken record in your head.

“Wow, um,” you had to say when he just stood there staring at you, not saying a word, “I’ll, um, I’ll go, then.”

But he must’ve seen the evident panic in your expression, and grabbed your wrist to prevent you from slipping past him and escaping back towards where you hoped Jooeun would still be.

“Y/N,” he tried to grab your attention, but you twisted in his grip, desperate to leave. Nothing burned you worse than such blatant rejection, and the last thing you wanted was to hear some bullshit excuse like ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’

“No, it’s fine, Sicheng,” you told him, firmly squashing the tears that would only make the situation worse, “forget about it.”

“No,” he asserted with more firmness than you would have thought his gentle voice capable of, “you’re misunderstanding.”

Your struggles wained until they ceased altogether, and you turned to take in his expression. His brows were furrowed and his mouth was set in a hard, serious line. The embarrassed heat that had welled in your cheeks intensified when the hand on your wrist wound its way down to your hand, tangling his fingers with yours.

He stepped closer until his chest brushed against yours with every breath. “Y/N, I’ve thought you were gorgeous from that first day that you showed me around,” he explained, a smile slipping onto his face as he watched your expression form to one of disbelief. “But for that reason, I found you really intimidating. I thought,” he chuckled, embarrassment tinging his own cheeks, “I thought you were out of my league, and that you would never be interesting. I would never have imagined that you’d be interested. That’s why I didn’t try to kiss you tonight, even though I wanted to, again and again.”

You stared at him, baffled, and he stared at you, apprehensive.

But unless you had misheard what he said through drunken ears, that had sounded like a go-ahead.

You let one hand slip up to glide over his cheek, thumb trailing across his cheekbone and watching in reverence as his eyelashes fluttered shut at the sensation. You felt his hands go to your hips, thumbs rubbing against the little bit of bare skin between your shirt and the top of your skirt. That was all the encouragement you needed to lift yourself up on your toes and reconnect your lips, the hand on his cheek travelling to the heart at the back of his head, tugging gently. His hands squeezed, pulling you closer as one went around your back to cradle you against him.

You detached yourself and leaned back in his hold, leaving the fingers of your right hand tangled in his soft tresses as the other came up to trace his plush lips. He watched you, enraptured, and his chest rose and fell in an attempt to catch his breath. You took a step back, having to push a little to get him to loosen his hold on you, and took his hand in yours and you dragged him over to one of the armchairs facing a disused TV mounted on the wall. You sat him down before seating yourself on his lap, resting your forehead against his and laying your hands against his chest.

He held your face between his hands and brought you back to him, brushing his nose against your for a moment before latching his lips onto your again, this time with more desperation and emotion. Your lips moved in a rapid but rhythmical cadence, broken up in intervals by the feeling of Sicheng gently taking your lower lip between your teeth and tugging, shaking a shiver from your bones.

When your lips were red and swollen, you dragged your mouth from his and moved west, peppering kisses along his cheek until you found the space below his ear. Your left hand came up to trace the shell with a fairy’s touch, feeling where it came to a tiny point. You gently grabbed at the soft skin below the lobe with your teeth, hoping to return the sensation he had bestowed upon you with his own grasp of your lips. You succeeded, feeling his body tremor slightly as his head rocked back and a gentle groan escaped his mouth.

You took the newly exposed skin as an invitation, moving your lips to the pale column of his neck and beginning to suck and pull against the skin. His hands moved down to your ass as you did so, delving into your back pockets and tugging you closer to him.

You shifted backwards slightly and reposition until you were straddling his lap, a position he seemed to greatly appreciate if the way he tugged you closer once more was any indicator. You felt a tightness in his pants press against your core, and slid backwards to test your theory. As you thought he would, he tugged you back to him, creating friction between your groins and dragging harmonious moans of pleasure from both of you.

You tugged at the neckline of his shirt, exposing his collarbones for you to place kisses along, but your lips were only there for a moment before long, dexterous fingers came under your chin and lifted your eyes back to his level. Holding the eye contact, Sicheng ground his hips upwards towards you, watching carefully for your reaction. The feeling of his clothed arousal teasing you right where you wanted him the most, paired with his hooded, lustful yet still sparkling gaze had you digging your nails into his shoulders and letting your head drop back, your mind reeling at the sensation.

A hand on the back of your head brought you back to him, your temple resting against the crown of his head as he pushed the strap of your top to the side and sunk his teeth into your skin, thrusting upwards as his did so in such a carnal, animalistic manner that for a moment you wondered if it was still Sicheng that was beneath you.

But when you locked eyes with him you found him watching you with reverential intrigue, careful noting the way you shivered as he dragged his fingers across the area he’d begun to mark purple or how your eyes began to roll back in your head when he tugged you closer and rolled his hips.

With a his long, delicate fingers, he took a hold of your hair and with gentle firmness brought your lips back to his, kissing you over and over again until your lungs began to scream for air but you would never dare to be the first to pull back. Not when the feeling of him holding you, of him wanting you was so deliriously blissful. You never would’ve picked such a seemingly diffident boy to be to able when it came to making you melt.

It was ultimately Sicheng who removed his mouth from yours, watching with a small smile as you followed his lips subconsciously. He stroked your mussed hair away from your eyes, dragging his fingertips over your brow bones in a crown of his own design. You smiled affectionately down at him from your small point of leverage, unable to stop the curve of your lips and ran you own hand through his hair, gently untangling the mess you’d made.

“C’mere,” he muttered, and before you could query what he meant, his arms were going under your thighs and he was standing from the chair, hoisting you into the air with him. He held you there for a moment, taking in the captivated expression on your face that came with the act, before setting you back on the floor. He wasted no time binding his hand with yours and leading you from the room, back towards the party.

You were still more than a little dazed, unsure how to comprehend this alarming turn of events, but you were certainly not going to spurn this gift from whichever god reigned over games of Seven Minutes in Heaven and boozed up college students.

You reached the party once more, the music overwhelming you almost immediately after so long immersed in just the boy holding your hand and the way he made you feel. He kept a tight hold of you, never letting the party swallow you up as he searched for someone.

When he spotted Yuta slumped on a couch in the corner with a joint in hand and a smile on his face, Sicheng stooped and whispered quickly in his friend’s ear. Yuta’s hazy eyes flickered to you before he nodded and smiled vaguely at Sicheng. It didn’t take a astro-physics major to figure out the exchange you had just witnessed, and as you caught sight of Jooeun on the other side of the room from the corner of your eye, you realised this was your last opportunity to disappear and make this night and everything you’d experienced with Sicheng little more than a figment of your drunk imagination.

But you let him lead you towards the foyer and up the curving marble staircase, down one of the halls and into a distinctly boyish bedroom. It was messy and covered in soccer paraphernalia and textbooks with sticky notes of translations scattered across each page, evidently the room had not been prepped for visitors. You paid little attention to all of that, though, as you let him lead you to the bed, shoving loose sheets of paper and books to the floor before climbing on top of you, and not a part of you minded one bit.

—

If the night had been a whirlwind of bliss, filmed in soft-focus and stored in your memories forever like a favourite movie, the morning after was anything but.

In your drunken rush the night before, neither you nor Sicheng had given the gaping curtains any thought, which meant the reckoning rays of sunlight that barged their way into the bedroom were quick to wake you up.

As you stirred, it took you a few moments to understand your situation. Your head felt stuffed full, your lips were dry and cracked, your tongue felt furry and heavy in the bottom of your mouth. You rubbed your eyes with your knuckles, only to be left with tar coloured marks striping your skin. You wiped at the skin underneath your eyes, hoping to avoid looking like something out of a horror movie, as the previous night dawned on you.

You turned to your right and the sight stopped your heart in your chest. Sicheng was sprawled out under the covers, back turned to the window and face buried in his pillow, dark hair fanning out around him as he breathed evenly. His expression was that of ethereal peace, and he had one arm slung around your waist. As you shifted into a seated position, the arm tightened in an attempt to bring your body closer, and a colossal part of you wanted to lie back down and curl into his side and sleep a few more hours to prevent the dream from ending.

But you quickly convinced yourself that couldn’t be your reality.

You felt not an ounce of regret about the night prior, but the idea that the painfully handsome boy beside you would was enough to have you carefully removing yourself from his hold, tugging your clothes back onto your body and skittering from the room as rapidly and silently as possible.

As you navigated your way back down the marble staircase and into the foyer, parts of the night assaulted your memory, and a flush coloured your cheeks where your makeup had worn off overnight. He was certainly flexible.

But the prospect of being present as he woke up and the possibility of him wishing the night had never happened, or worse, passing it off as a mistake had you tiptoeing across the polished floor, hoping to take your leave unnoticed.

As you reached the door and began quickly praying that it wouldn’t squeak terribly as you opened it, a voice behind you bid you a “Good morning.”

You swung around, having to focus hard on not making an unnecessarily high pitched sound in fright, and laid eyes on Mark Lee, holding a bowl of dry cereal and positively dripping sleep. His hair was unruly, his eyes still puffy and he was definitely in the same clothes as last night, but now his t-shirt was Midori green and Grenadine red instead of white.

There was a moment of silence as he took in your dishevelled appearance and the hickeys on your neck. You waited for the younger boy to say something, but he just brought his gaze back to you and shoved more milk-less cereal in his mouth.

“Bye,” you said.

“See ya.”

And with that you were out the door and down the street, only feeling relief when you had left Greek Row well behind you.

—

You reserved all of Sunday for rest and recovery, spending the day curled up in bed, nursing your pounding head and slightly queasy stomach. Jooeun—who had spent the day oscillating between studying and fetching your food and pain killers—managed to pry from your parched lips that you had spent the night with the very boy you’d struggled to speak five words to a week ago.

You were tempted to explain what had happened, but you didn’t. The time you and Sicheng had spent in the pool room had felt so special and dreamlike because you were the only ones that shared knowledge of that experience. You acknowledged Sicheng was likely to at least tell his close friends about what happened, and usually you would too, but for whatever reason you just nodded along, agreeing with her disbelief and mumbling ‘I know, how crazy’ at intermittent, appropriate intervals.

Monday rolled around and you were sufficiently recuperated, ready to start the week afresh and maybe spend next Saturday night studying or sleeping early.

You walked into your sociology lecture, quickly locating your friends and slumping into the seat, ready for two hours of trying to stay awake and engaged. As your eyes scanned the room while your professor took his time arriving to class, you noticed a very familiar brown mop of hair making his way in from the bottom door. The lecture theatre was not huge, and in some implausible stroke of cruel coincidence, his eyes found you in a heartbeat.

He was paused, waiting for his NKT friends to stumble into the theatre behind him, and for a moment he doesn’t do anything but look at you. The extended eye contact had you burning, the ghost of his fingers on your neck, on your torso, between your legs, and for a moment you were almost naive enough to think that maybe he wasn’t regretful, maybe you two could grow a friendship, if nothing else? The time you’d spent talking had been more than just a little enjoyable, you had truly gotten along. So you let a small smile form on your lips and raised your hand in an awkward wave.

You were just about to gesture for him and his friends to take the spare seats near you and your group, but it was a good thing you didn’t. At the sight of your greeting, Sicheng’s face crumpled in an expression that you couldn’t put a name to, but it was undoubtedly negative, and quickly took a seat with his friends on the opposite side of the room.

You felt as if your heart had immediately frozen to stone, and then Sicheng had proceeded to shoot a pullet straight through the centre, destroying it until it crumbled into finally crushed powder that would be impossible to reconstruct. It was stupid of you to feel that way, you were the one that had snuck out, you should be just as ready to ignore him as he was you, but it still hurt like you wouldn’t believe.

But as the lecture dragged by, you found your mind had snagged on the look he’d given you and the more you tried to untangle yourself, the more stuck you became on the idea that you had to talk to him.

So after the lecturer had wrapped up and dismissed you, you moved as quickly as you could through the crowd of sluggish students without looking suspicious, leaving through the top door and working your way around to catch him as he exited from the bottom. As you descended the stairs, you saw him leave with the flood of others, head down as he listened to something Doyoung was saying. Turning to reply, his eyes managed to find you again. This time he didn’t even pause to look. By the time you hit the bottom of the stairs, though, you couldn’t spot him anymore. He had vanished into thin air.

—

By the time it came to Wednesday you’d mostly decided to let it slide. The immediate bite of being ignored had provoked a strange desperation in you, but time had given you clarity and sanity, or at least enough to know not to get hung up on it. He was just a boy, a cute boy, but still just a boy.

Between classes you often grabbed a smoothie from one of the cafes on campus, so routinely in fact that the baristas all knew your order when you walked in the door. What was out of routine on this particular day was the blond boy in the line in front of you.

“Hey,” you greeted Jaehyun casually, “has your house recovered after Saturday night?”

Now, you and Jaehyun were certainly not close friends, or even really friends at all, but he was well known around campus for being indiscriminately gregarious. Any faint acquaintance was a friend to talk to in his books. So when he turned, saw you, gave you the briefest and most insincere of smiles and shrugged a ‘sure,’ you were left with a sour taste in your mouth.

Deciding to try again, you ignored the rude greeting, “Hope nobody’s too out of pocket as far as alcohol goes.”

This time he didn’t even turn to make eye contact, instead taking his phone from his pocket, “Nah.”

You were baffled at where the attitude was coming from. Sure Sicheng may have been ignoring you, but why Jaehyun? He was the last person that could rightfully judge someone for a one night stand.

But before you could properly confront the blond haired menace, he was taking his coffee from the barista, flashing his famous smile and making a beeline towards the exit without a backwards glance.

You wrote it off as peculiar but not a huge loss when you hadn’t even been introduced to him before Saturday, got your smoothie and headed towards the library to get much needed work done before a tutorial in a few hours.

Rounding the corner to the desk area, you immediately spotted a head of orange hair. You stalled where you stood for a moment. Doyoung had been your friend for a while, but he was still an NKT boy, and you knew how stupidly seriously frat took their loyalty. But you assured yourself you were being paranoid, and plonked your books down across from him.

He looked up immediately, removing his earbuds and shooting you a distracted smile.

“It’s all right if I sit here?” You checked, Doyoung quickly nodding as he paused his music.

He gave you a look, “How’re you after Saturday?”

You shrugged noncommittally, hoping to come across as though your actions on Saturday night and Sunday morning weren’t taking a toll on you that even you were a little to stubborn and afraid to admit.

“I don’t know,” you kept your tone level, “I seem to have gotten up the noses of a few of the NKT boys, though.”

“Just a little,” Doyoung quipped sarcastically, giving you a smile that bordered between normal and friendly and something pitying.

“Why is that?” You tried to pry without looking to investigative, digging through your bag for books, “I mean, a one night stand isn’t new for the century.”

Doyoung was silent, and when you looked up at him you found a shocked expression plastered across his face.

“Wait,” he managed to find his voice, “you don’t know?”

“I don’t know what?”

Your confusion only thickened when Doyoung tried to explain, “You played Sicheng, of course a couple of the guys are going to be pissed off. You’ve met the guy, he’s way too loveable. Yuta and Jaehyun almost went on a murderous rampage when Sicheng came downstairs the next morning, looking like a kicked puppy and saying you’d snuck out.”

You blinked at him for a moment, trying to absorb what Doyoung just said as he sat in silence, unsure what kind of reaction you would have.

Your brain and mouth struggled to form more than, “What? Played?”

Doyoung bobbed his head slowly, as if you had suddenly regressed to the mental comprehension of a toddler, “Yes?”

“That’s not—oh my god, why are boys so dumb. Why am I so dumb, what the fuck” you rambled, quickly shoving your books back into your bag.

“Where are you going?” Doyoung asked, watching you in confusion, still wanting to clarify why you were so shocked in the first place.

You ignored his question, instead opting to ask one of your own, “What’s Sicheng’s number?”

“What?”

“You have it, right?” Doyoung nodded. “Can I have it?”

“Um, sure?” Doyoung fished his phone from his jacket pocket, fiddling around with it before texting you the contact.

“Thanks, I’ll text you later,” you told him, before standing back up and power walking from the library, thumbs already flying across your keyboard.

Hey, it’s Y/N

I’m aware I’m probably the last person you want to see rn

But can we meet up somewhere to talk?

Your heart hammered violently against your ribcage and you felt your entire body increase in temperature as you waited for your phone to buzz, afraid that he might turn you down, even more afraid that he wouldn’t respond at all. You weren’t sure if your heart tried to leap out of your chest or just stopped altogether when you felt the hellish device vibrate.

I don’t have long before I need to go to a tut

But sure

Where at?

You were silently disbelieving for a few moments, but texted him back with the name of the cafe you’d just left, hurrying towards the appointed location yourself.

You found a table in the corner and tried to silence the part of your mind that was still trying to convince you that he was going to stand you up, but you should’ve known better when he walked through the door. He may be mad, but if you’d learnt anything on Saturday it was that he wasn’t rude.

He spotted you and made his way over, but yet another part of you sort of wanted him to continue standing in the doorway, surrounded by light as if he were bathing in it. He was in extraordinarily ripped black jeans and a hoodie of a matching colour, with a white hat covering his dark hair. As he slid into the seat across from you and removed his cap, you were given a perfect view of the purple bags dangling from his eyes and the small frown that was settled on his rose-pink lips.

The atmosphere was immediately awkward as he sat their, tail up and coat bristled as he waited for you to talk. Upon witnessing the look on his face, you decided to skip any small talk.

“I never ‘played’ you, Sicheng,” you launched straight to the point, wanting to get this discussion over as quickly as possible. “None of Saturday night was a lie in any way, shape or form. I really, genuinely enjoyed spending time with you.”

His expression didn’t shift a whole lot, the tinge of vexation on his otherwise blank face morphing to skepticism.

“Why did you feel like you had to sneak out at the ass crack of dawn the next morning, then?” He asked, his soft voice so melodious that you almost forgot to reply to his very weighted words.

You tossed up between your options. You could continue to play it off, say that you had an early appointment or that your friend could only pick you up then, but you knew he’d see straight through those excuses. So you chose to bite the godforsaken bullet laced with something that could kill you or save you, and lay your heart and pride on the line.

“If I’m being honest?”

“Please,” Sicheng said, and there sounded like something akin to desperation in his voice.

“I didn’t want to face the possibility of rejection. I had a great time with you, but that was the first time we held a proper conversation, Sicheng, and NKT boys are pretty notorious. I’m well aware that some boys can create any character they need to. It was distrustful of me, but I made the first move and got out of there before you woke up and kicked me out yourself,” you glanced down at your hands splayed on the table so that they didn’t ball into fists and go bone white at the knuckles.

You sat there, emotionally vulnerable and building in tension as Sicheng sat opposite, face unreadable as he processed everything that you had just divulged. As the silence endured, you felt yourself incapable of sitting there and doing nothing but stewing in the echo of your own voice for any longer.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He glanced at you and nodded, still in an unresponsive stupor.

You swallowed, and wondered if you following words were sensible in the slightest,

“Why have you apparently been so upset the past few days?” You asked tentatively, “The guys I’ve been with before were stoked if they got away with a one night stand, no string attached.”

He genuinely frowned this time, strong eyebrows drawing together and lips pouting slightly in a way that would be cute were he not genuinely frustrated.

“Because I wasn’t lying just to fuck you on Saturday night. I really like you, Y/N, and it…” he swallowed, but the muscles in his face remained taught and determined as he levelled you with his gaze, “It stung like a bitch when I woke up and you were already gone, ok? It almost felt like you were making fun of me.”

“It wasn’t like that at all,” you hurried to reassure him, not caring if you sounded desperate and too desperate to worry about possibly sounding insincere. “I had a really good night, and I thought the morning might ruin it. It’s happened before, when leaving would’ve been much easier and less painful. I was trying not to repeat past mistakes.”

You voice lost its strength as you got to the end of your rebuttal, realising that you were doing what you always told Jooeun not to do before she got together with Hansol. You were projecting others onto Sicheng, when he deserved more than just the benefit of the doubt. You had trusted him with your body, you should have been smart or openminded enough to trust him with your heart, as well. Because sitting there now, the both of you too caught up in the conversation to realise you were missing the beginning of your tutorials, you noticed there wasn’t a malicious bone in his body or a spiteful hair on his head.

You both lapsed into silence, and after what felt like an eternity of waiting, you decided that was as much of an answer as you were going to get. You’d done your best to clear up whatever messy misunderstanding you’d managed to create, but it was fair for Sicheng to still want nothing to do with you.

“I’ll go,” you told him, doing your utmost to make sure he could see no sadness in your smile as you grabbed your bag and stood up.

But a hand reached out and grabbed your wrist—those same long, dexterous fingers and had roamed all over your skin a few nights prior, the same ones you could still feel when you let your imagination run away too far with too much exuberance.

You looked down at Sicheng with wide eyes. His face was set with determination, but it was different from before. This wasn’t forceful or resigned or angry. Just full of resolution.

“We should really try and catch the end of our tutorials,” he admitted, “but I’m free tonight. How about we grab dinner or something and see if our drunk chemistry still stands?”

You felt no shame as your face transformed with a cheek splitting grin, relief shoving the heavy weight of anxiety from your shoulders and letting you stand tall with ease once more. You felt his thumb move against your wrist, and you nodded. “Sounds perfect.”


End file.
